


Irreconcilable Differences

by kjack89



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Divorce, Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 01:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1800946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/kjack89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras and Grantaire file for divorce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Irreconcilable Differences

**Author's Note:**

> I was prompted with angst with a happy ending and I've done my best to deliver, though this isn't particularly heavy on the angst.
> 
> Usual disclaimer. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos!

Marius cleared his throat, his pen poised over the yellow legal pad in front of him. They hadn’t even started the proceedings yet, and his ears were already red, whether from embarrassment or stress. “I would like to remind you this isn’t a deposition,” he started, his voice a little higher-pitched than normal, especially as he glanced sideways at Enjolras, whose expression was stony. “Neither of you are under legal obligation here, and nothing you say will leave this room if you don’t want it to.” He glanced at Enjolras again, then back down at his pad of paper. “Let’s start at the beginning — what reason are you citing for the divorce?”

Enjolras took a deep breath before exhaling heavily, his hands clenching almost involuntarily against the smooth wood of the conference room table. “Irreconcilable differences.”

Grantaire snorted and leaned forward to peer around Marius. “And here I thought irreconcilable differences was the reason you cited for why we should be together in the first place.”

“Grantaire,” Marius sighed, shooting him a look, and Grantaire made a face as he leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed in front of his chest, not caring that he was causing the only suit he owned to wrinkle. Shaking his head, Marius jotted something down on the pad of paper and looked expectantly at Enjolras. “I’m here as Grantaire’s counsel, of course, but that means I legally represent him. Enjolras, I’d advise you to bring in your own external counsel, particularly if things today don’t go well—”

“I don’t need external counsel,” Enjolras interrupted, his voice sharp. “I’m going to be representing myself.”

Marius looked surprised. “Have you had any dealings with divorce proceedings?” he asked cautiously. “Obviously I have to act in my client’s best interests, and…” He trailed off, quailing slightly at the glare Enjolras gave him. “Ok, then. If you’re both fine with continuing…”

He glanced down at his notes. “There are several matters to be settled, including Enjolras’s sizeable trust fund, which became jointly Grantaire’s upon your union. Since there was no prenuptial agreement signed between you two—”

Grantaire snorted again and shook his head. “Can you believe that I was the one who argued for a prenup in the first place? Bet you’re wishing you’d listened to me now.”

Enjolras glared at him and struggled to keep his voice even. “You were the one who was convinced that this marriage would fail.”

Grantaire met his gaze squarely. “And which one of us was proven correct?”

Marius looked as if he would honestly rather be anywhere else in the world than sitting between the two men, who were glaring at each other with enough intensity that Marius thought something in the room might catch on fire. “Anyway,” he said quickly, “Enjolras’s trust fund isn’t the only thing that you’ll need to decide how to divide. Grantaire also has significant assets, stemming particularly from his art sales over the years, as well as a diverse stock portfolio—”

Enjolras raised an eyebrow at Grantaire, who smirked. “I may have been completely incompetent at math but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, and there are such things as stockbrokers who invest money for you, in the event that, you know, your stubborn-ass husband decides he wants a divorce and thus you’re stuck on your own.”

“You were the one who wanted a divorce,” Enjolras said, quietly, a wounded look flashing across his face as if remembering the fought that had brought them to this point, a screaming match that had started over something trivial but was the culmination of several weeks’ worth of unhappiness and arguing, so much worse than normal, and had somehow ended in Grantaire shouting at Enjolras that he wanted a divorce. “And I never thought you were an idiot; I just didn’t realize that you had bought into the corrupt capitalist stock market system.”

Grantaire made a disparaging noise in the back of his throat and shook his head, suddenly looking exhausted. “And the fact that you would turn even our divorce proceedings into yet another rant against the capitalist system is precisely the reason why I wanted a divorce in the first place.”

Enjolras’s eyes flashed and he shook his head as he shot back, “You knew what I was like when we got together in the first place. You knew what I was like when I proposed to you by telling you that the ring in my hand had conflict-free diamonds in the band and never even got the words ‘will you marry me’ out of my mouth. You knew—”

Marius cleared his throat, his ears possibly burning redder than they had previously. “If you guys want, I could, uh, give you a minute. Alone. Since this isn’t exactly helping the dissolution of your marriage.”

Grantaire avoided looking at either Enjolras or Marius and jerked a shrug, his shoulders tense, and Enjolras looked at Marius and nodded shortly. “Yeah. That’s probably a good idea.” Marius promptly stood, gathering his notes together and silently slipping out of the room, closing the door behind him. Enjolras looked over at Grantaire and sighed heavily, running a hand across his face. “Did you pick Marius as your lawyer just to spite me?”

Snorting, Grantaire rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, still determinedly avoiding Enjolras’s gaze. “No, I picked Marius as my lawyer so that I could take you for all that you’re worth, just to spite you.”

Enjolras sighed again and leaned forward, propping his elbows up on the table and resting his forehead against the heels of his hands. “I just can’t believe it’s all come down to this,” he said softly. “Dividing our assets, as if our entire relationship was some business transaction.”

Grantaire made a face at the ceiling. “And you were the one so strongly in favor of marriage equality,” he murmured. “Well, here’s the reality of it: same-sex divorce looks exactly like every other divorce.”

Enjolras hesitated for a moment before scooting closer to Grantaire, his expression almost earnest as he looked at him. “It doesn’t have to be like that, though.”

Finally looking at Enjolras, Grantaire said wryly, “Divorce isn’t supposed to be amicable, Enj. It’s supposed to be messy and complicated and it’s supposed to suck. A lot. We’re pretty much par for the course right now.”

“But that’s what I mean,” Enjolras said, his voice turning soft. “We don’t have to get divorced at all.”

“Enjolras—” Grantaire sighed, but Enjolras didn’t give him a chance to finish his sentence to or come up with an argument against that. Instead, he closed the space between them and kissed Grantaire, hard, cupping the back of Grantaire’s head with one hand while tugging on Grantaire’s suit lapel with the other, half-pulling him out of his seat.

Grantaire responded in kind, pressing Enjolras back against the table, his kiss hungry and a little desperate. He grabbed Enjolras by the ass to lift him up and set him down on the table, stepping between his legs, his hands sliding up Enjolras’s thighs. “Are we really going to do this here?” Enjolras asked, gasping slightly when Grantaire bent to bite into his neck.

“It’s not like we haven’t fucked in an office before,” Grantaire told him, his eyes glinting, and though Enjolras laughed a little at that, he also pulled away, his hands resting lightly on Grantaire’s chest.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” Enjolras sighed, kissing Grantaire once more before saying, “Maybe I should rephrase: are we going to do this  _now_?”

Grantaire’s expression tightened and he took a small step back and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “No better time since we may never get another chance,” he said, a little gruffly.

Enjolras frowned and rubbed his forehead before letting out a weak laugh. “If only sex could solve our problems,” he mused.

Now Grantaire smiled, though it was a bittersweet smile. “Unfortunately, sex never was an issue for us. We were always better lovers than we were friends.” He paused, reaching out to cup Enjolras’s cheek, his thumb stroking his cheekbone lightly as Enjolras closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. “And even now that hasn’t changed. We can’t just be friends — divorce notwithstanding, there’s way too much between us.”

“Then what are we doing here?” Enjolras asked quietly, without opening his eyes.

Grantaire’s hand dropped from Enjolras’s cheek, and he took another step back. “I was under the impression that we were about to get a divorce.”

“But why?” Enjolras asked insistently, grabbing Grantaire’s hand before he could pull away completely. “I know that we’ve had our differences, but Grantaire, I still love you. And I don’t want to do this.”

Grantaire shook his head, avoiding Enjolras’s gaze, though he made no move to pull his hand away from Enjolras’s. “Of course you don’t want to do this,” he muttered, a touch waspish. “You never were one to know when to quit.”

A muscle worked in Enjolras’s jaw, but his voice was calm, if determined, when he replied, “No, I was never one to give up on something worth fight for.”

“You really think this is something worth fighting for?” Grantaire asked skeptically. “With the fighting and the shouting and everything else? Because it’s not like we’ve been happy together, recently, unless there’s something that you’re not telling me and you take joy in my misery.”

Enjolras shook his head firmly. “No. Absolutely not. But I know that we  _can_ be happy, and I think that’s something worth working towards.” Grantaire just shook his head again, though he seemed a little undecided, and Enjolras continued desperately. “If you tell me, here and now, that you don’t love me anymore, if you can look me in the eyes and say those words, I will sign the divorce papers right now. No contestation, no having to appear before a judge. I will give you half of everything in our life without complaint or argument.  _If_  you can tell me you don’t love me.”

Grantaire’s expression was shuttered, and a little pained, and he shook his head slowly. “The problem is not that I don’t love you anymore, Enjolras,” he said quietly. “I will love you until the day that I die. The problem is that the fact that I love you is not enough to make this marriage work.”

“But is the fact that you love me enough to make you want to fight for this?” Enjolras challenged.

Grantaire closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m so tired of fighting,” he said quietly. “Fighting you, fighting to try to make this marriage work, fighting to remember why I fell in love with you in the first place.”

Enjolras slipped slowly from the table and took a step towards Grantaire. “Then maybe fight isn’t the right word,” he said, his voice just as quiet. “But we’ve built something here, and I think that what we have is worth trying to save. It’s going to take work and I can’t promise that we’ll never fight again, but, God, Grantaire, I never wanted to fight you, I only ever wanted to fight on your side.”

Swallowing hard, Grantaire asked softly, “But how do I know that it’s worth it?”

“Because  _you’re_  worth it,” Enjolras told him, closing the space between them and kissing Grantaire before telling him, “You’re worth  _everything_  to me. And all I want is the chance to prove it to you.” Grantaire just looked up at him and Enjolras kissed him again, gentler this time, before saying, “Give me a chance to prove you wrong. Please.”

Grantaire was quiet for a long moment before he said cautiously, “A contested divorce could take weeks before it ends up in court. We could see where we’re at when that happens. But I’m serious — things have to change. The irreconcilable differences…we have to find a way to, if not reconcile them, then make peace with them. Because we can’t keep living like this. No matter how much we love each other.”

Enjolras’s face broke into a wide grin, and he kissed Grantaire, pulling him close and wrapping his arms around him. “I promise,” he said solemnly and sincerely, though he couldn’t stop smiling. “It will take a lot of work, but I promise that I will do everything I can to make this work. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Grantaire told him, smiling as well, even if his smile was still a little cautious.

Enjolras kissed him once more before asking, his voice pitched low, “Will you come home with me?”

The husky pitch in his voice and the way his arms tightened around Grantaire showed that he was hoping to do more at their apartment than just start working on fixing their relationship. Grantaire shook his head, his smile fading slightly. “No,” he said, in a tone that booked no room for argument. “No, we have a  _lot_  that we need to work on, and we need to take time to work on those issues. I can’t just come back home with you as if nothing’s changed.”

“Ok,” Enjolras said, instantly, not even a hint of disappointment on his face. “Then will you let me take you out on a date? Dinner, maybe a few drinks?”

Grantaire hesitated before nodding, a genuine smile spreading across his face. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea.” He paused before leaning in and whispering in Enjolras’s ear, “And maybe we can get a hotel room or something. If the date goes well.”

“What, Joly and Bossuet don’t want us fucking on their couch?” Enjolras asked, though he was grinning, his eyes dark as he looked at Grantaire, who just laughed and shook his head.

“After last time? No.” He pulled reluctantly away from Enjolras but reached down to lace their fingers together. “But I think we can afford a hotel room. But  _only_  if the date goes well.”

Enjolras smiled and squeezed his hand. “Then what are we waiting for?”

They started to head towards the door, then Grantaire paused, looking suddenly stricken. “What are we going to tell Marius?”

Enjolras frowned, then shrugged. “Tell him that we’re still getting a divorce and that we can’t agree on anything. I’ll file a motion in the morning to contest the proceedings, and then we’ll take things from there.” He squeezed Grantaire’s hand again. “I want to take things slowly just as much as you. I want to do this right so that when the time comes, we can withdraw our divorce filing as if it never happened.”

“Not as if it never happened,” Grantaire corrected, twisting his head to look up at Enjolras. “As if it happened and we learned something from it and are much better, much happier husbands because of it.”

“I can live with that,” Enjolras said, pulling Grantaire to him and kissing his forehead lightly, his touch as gentle as his voice. “I can live with that.”


End file.
